The Flash Friday video series has given Denver a truly unique cultural niche. No other city, anywhere, has managed to bring genuine cultural value to those giant, flashing LED screens that have become so ubiquitous (and obnoxious) in urban areas.

The program, funded by the Denver Theatre District, presents short, in-motion works by digital artists from across the world. Much of the material has been commissioned specifically for Denver, putting the city on the edge of what’s likely to be the art of the future.

The pieces each have their own personality. They can be stop-motion photography or straight-forward animation. They can be narrative like films, or abstract like a modern painting, they are, almost always, full of color and constant activity.

As a group, they are simultaneously challenging, because of their mysterious content and the speed with which it whizzes by, and highly accessible, because they’re displayed on the most public platforms possible. This season’s Friday evening finale on Sept. 25 will show on the outdoor screen at 14th Street and Champa streets, which is about 50 feet wide and 30 feet tall.

“It’s easy to think these pieces are being created with a large production budget and a team of people, but they’re not,” said Ivar Zeile, who curates the program under the auspices of Denver Digerati. “It’s coming from one guy.”

Indeed production values tend to be high, even if the works are made by singular artists hunkered over laptops in coffee shops in Amsterdam or Hong Kong or LoDo. Technology enables them to work quickly and accurately and cover ground that not so long ago required mega-movie studios and millions of dollars in equipment.

Evolving computer programs allow artists to pursue rich and ambitious visions. For “This Ain’t Disneyland” on Friday’s all-commission program, artist Faiyaz Jafri uses drawn animation to explore his flashbacks from Sept. 11 and how they intersect with the wholesome memories he has of Disney cartoons as a child. Over the course of 1 minute and 10 seconds, a pair of twin towers come down and, in their places, rise creatures with round mouse ears.

Denver artist Mario Zoots describes his “She Took” as ” French new wave meets digital art.” The two-minute, 22-second piece blends filmmaking and digital manipulation into a narrative about a young woman sexting on her cell phone. It has a 1960s retro feel, with subtitles instead of sound and finishes as a parable of sorts with a lesson about our connected sexuality.

Zoots, known locally for his photos and collages, pushed his personal limits for the work, bringing in colleagues to help with the dialogue, filmmaking and acting. He devised most of the droning musical score himself.

“This piece is not safe, it’s a little edgy,” Zoots said. “In my work, there’s a lot of weird references to sex and I wanted to stay true to what I create.”

Other pieces don’t tell stories at all, but consist of moving lines or shapes. Some just offer visual impressions that can be hard to dissect quickly.

The complicated ideas and themes give credibility to Flash Friday, but they also present a challenge. The most public of art has to be sensitive to the fact that anyone can see it, kids, tourists, and folks who prefer their art not to drop its bikini bottom to the floor, like the heroine in “She Took.”

“I really don’t tell the artist anything other than this is a public conversation,” said Zeile, who puts out the commissions. But he does go back and forth sometimes with creators making sure there’s no nudity and no wildly inappropriate moments. Hints of troubled minds and extreme intimacy are fine, if delivered in a meaningful, non-offensive way.

Because large-scale LED screen art remains new, Flash Friday, which kicked off in 2012, has had to figure out the ground rules on the fly. It is maturing in solid ways; the work gets more sophisticated each year and many of the commissioned works have gone on to show at film festivals across the globe.

Denver Digerati now holds nearly 30 works in its archives and all are visible anytime on its website. Three years in, it has built quality inventory that will allow it to expand its programming beyond the downtown screenings that occasionally interrupt the constant barrage of advertisements that populate the LED screens.

Ziele optimistically see the growing archives as a “bridge to something else” and envisions longer, more frequent screenings or a mobile van that could travel to events, or perhaps one day, a giant LED screen devoted full-time to art.

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